An interview with Dr John C. Taylor OBE FREng:

Inventions and Engineering

Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng was recently interviewed by Tom Evans on the Zone Show.

He is one of the most prolific inventors of the twentieth century, with over four hundred patents to his name.

With Tom Evans, he went through a few of his favourite and best-known creations.

Being an inventor, I never want to do what anyone else has

ever done before.

Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng

“How do you get your ideas?”

“Usually, it’s hearing other people’s problems. If I hear someone’s problem I can either solve it in fifteen seconds or I can’t solve it – I find that’s how my brain works. If I can’t find a solution to it within a few seconds, it doesn’t matter how long I think about it after that, I generally won’t find a solution.”

“What have you invented that is in common use?”

“Well usually people talk about kettle controls, and I’ve spent many years designing automatic kettle controls. I set up a little factory here on the Isle of Man in 1981, specialising in kettle controls.

“I retired in 1999 and in 2004 the new owners of the business threw a party to celebrate having sold a billion kettle controls from a standing start in 1981.

“In the 1960s I designed a little motor protector. It was for a company my father had formed in Buxton, Derbyshire: Otter Controls Ltd. Recently, one of my friends had passed away and there was a memorial service for him, so I went back up to Buxton.

“At the reception afterwards, talking to people from the company, I said, “I was looking on the internet and I saw that you were still making the Otter Gee, the little motor protector,” and the answer was, “Yes, yes, it’s still one of our best lines.”

“So I said, “Well, how many do you think you’ve made?”

“Well,” he said, “before you left the company it was running at 150,000 a week. By the eighties it was 250,000 a week. By the nineties and noughties it peaked at about 350,000 a week. It’s down a bit now to 250,000, but it’s still one of our best lines. For the last 50 years it’s averaged 250,000 a week.”

“What does it control?”

“It’s a safety device inside an electric motor. The actual motor current goes through the bimetal, and the resistance of the bimetal is higher than the copper windings. When the motor stalls the current increases, as does the heat by the square of the current, so you can actually make the bimetal switch off the electric current even before the windings have got hot.”

“What sort of motors would it be controlling – is it industrial or domestic?”

“Both. The biggest market is for motorcars – a modern motorcar has 20 electric motors, and each one has to be protected so that it can’t catch fire. If it stalled, froze up, you’d forget there are not only windscreen wiper motors, now there are headlight wiper motors, squirter motors, seat lift motors, suspension-levelling motors. There are two dozen electric motors in even a medium-sized car these days.”

The Jaguar E-type was one of the first cars to use Dr Taylor’s control

“So could you tell us about one of your more recent creations, John?”

“It’s called the Chronophage. It’s a clock and a piece of modern art, I think – that was the objective.

“I’m a great believer in the fact that there is no point complaining about something unless you can do something that’s better.

“I thought, ‘what can I do which would be completely modern and different, and yet entertain and have a sense of humour.’

“I thought it would be a great tribute to John Harrison to turn the clock inside out and put the grasshopper escapement on display so that everybody could see how it works.

“The other reason why I wanted to do a tribute to John Harrison was: who invented bimetal? John Harrison.

“He invented bimetal to temperature-compensate his sea clocks. I’ve spent my life using bimetal, and for most of my life I didn’t know who had invented it. It never crossed my mind.

“When I went into more detail in horology, I discovered that John Harrison had invented bimetal. He was a prolific inventor, even though he was a carpenter and had no technical training.

“He invented things like the caged roller bearing, which is used in millions of things every day: in washing machines, motorcars. They all have caged bearings with balls and rollers.

“So, trying to bring it all together, I decided that I would try to turn the Harrison grasshopper escapement inside out and make it the feature of the clock.

“Time – it certainly has a beginning, does it have an end?

“It began with the Big Bang, which radiated out from the centre. Time starts from the centre, from that moment.

“So on the dial of the clock, the face of the clock, I had ripples of time coming out from the centre of the universe.

“If you throw a stone into a pond you get a splash, and I thought if time started in the Big Bang, perhaps there was also a splash coming out – a parallel universe splashing out, a vestigial start in the centre of the clock.”

“So, where is the Chronophage?”

“It’s on the outside of Corpus Christi College, looking down Kings Parade onto Kings College Chapel, which has been there since 1515.

“It’s been a visitor attraction in Cambridge for all of that period, but it’s been superseded – more visitors come to look at the Corpus Clock than come to look at Kings College Chapel.”

“What next for the Chronophage?”

“We’ve just finished a Chronophage for a private collector in America.

“We’re also taking the Dragon Chronophage, which has a grasshopper escapement in the guise of a Chinese dragon, to be exhibited at Design Shanghai on March 27-30 2015.”

Produced by George Murdoch, Famous Publicity

For more information about Dr John C Taylor’s life and work, see http://www.johnctaylor.com/

For information on Tom Evans, see http://www.tomevans.co/

The Zone Show interview can be found here: https://audioboom.com/boos/2707538-a-man-for-our-time

For media contact, please contact George Murdoch at 07834 643 977 or george@famouspublicity.com or Tina Fotherby at 07703 409 622 or tina@famouspublicity.com.